Is Your Brand Fundraising-Ready?

In 1969, Abraham Maslow amended his original motivational hierarchy by adding an eighth and crowning layer. Self-transcendence is the motivation a person has to connect to something beyond their own ego, to help others find self-fulfillment and realize their own potential.

Self-transcendence is the key to unlocking a donor’s heart and their pocket book. It’s an essential need that sits inside every person, like a smoldering ember waiting to be ignited into flame.

To determine how branding can drive an organization’s fundraising, HALO “ladders up” seeking answers to three questions:

What is the critical need state that the organization is addressing and why should a donor prospect even care?

How can the tangible impacts that a cause provides beneficiaries ladder up to a higher emotional benefit?

How will this emotional benefit make the donor prospect become a better person – how will it help him/her make a difference?

To make a brand fundraising-ready, not-for-profit marketers have to go beyond telling prospective donors what makes their cause so great in order to show how their brand will make donors feel great about themselves.